ART JOINS THE NAVY

 

In 1959, I joined the Navy to see the world. Truth be known, I didn’t really join the Navy, I joined the Navy Reserve. The Navy Reserve was only a two year enlistment with a four year inactive reserve component.

I went to NAVY bootcamp in the summer of 1959 between my junior and senior years of highschool. It was later in 1962 that I reupped for six more years but that’s another sea story for another time. Needless to say, I wasn’t at all intimidated by any fat slob gym teacher or any other self taught bad ass teachers. 

I went on active duty to Philadelphia in July of 1960 fresh out of high school. I took an overnight train and had a roomette which was living high at that time. After about three weeks in Phily at the receiving station I got my orders to Guided Missile A School in Virginia Beach. The school was actually in Dam Neck, VA abutting the aptly named Great Dismal Swamp which was crawling with poisonous Water Moccasin snakes and other critters. I had to extend my two year enlistment for an additional year in order to become a Guided Missileman.

In February of 1961 I flew on a DC-3, a Vickers Vicount turboprop, a DC-7 and a DC-8 jet from Norfolk to Los Angeles with stops along the way. All in one day. When we got to LAX, this was before jetways were used, on a February evening we deplaned. It was colder that a witches tit in Virginia so I had on my woolen Navy dress blues, a wool Navy turtleneck sweater and my woolen peacoat. It was about 77 degrees outside at eight in the evening and I knew right there and then that this was going to what I will be calling home. I was to attend Terrier Missile BT-3 C school at the General Dynamics plant in Pomona where the missiles were built. After almost a year of missile schools, I was now ready to join the fleet and finally see the world.

Was I going to stay in California and be in the Pacific Fleet and visit exotic ports of call. Or was I going back to Norfolk to join the Atlantic Fleet? FIGMO, F It Got My Orders. It wasn’t to be Pacific or Atlantic fleets. It was Southern Indiana. What the hell was in not just Indiana but Southern Indiana I wondered. NAD Crane was the answer. Deep in the heart of Southern Indiana away from any bad guys is the Navy’s central ammunition depot. This was farm country 110 square miles of rolling hills with over 10,000 earthen covered ammunition magazines.

Never the less, being sailors we learned many many ways to amuse ourselves deep in farm country. The only local radio station we could receive signed off at sunset.

But, once again, as usual, I digress.

Back to Art. Crane Indiana is a bit over 400 miles from Cleveland so I used to drive up and back on long weekends. It was about an eight hour drive. During Christmas of 1961 I was back in Cleveland hanging with my buds and after six days I had to go back for one day for “duty”. Duty in the Navy means that one has to stand a watch of some sort even though everything is closed for the holidays. My watch consisted driving about 10 miles in a Navy pickup truck to make the rounds of the Guided Missile Service Unit where I worked and make sure that the place was  “secure”. Secure in navy talk means that the doors were all closed and locked. That the place hadn’t burned down and maybe no Cubans hadn’t swum up the Wabash River and penetrated the security.

I asked Art who is my oldest friend that I’ve known since the third grade if he wanted to go down to Indiana for a day. He asked where he could stay and I told him in the barracks which was an old Navy hospital that had been repurposed as a barracks. There was only about a dozen single sailors who lived there and most of them would either be at home on leave or in jail. He said he didn’t have any Navy uniform to wear and I explained that we wore civvies except during actual work.   Where could he eat? He asked. Right in the chow hall with who ever actually there and the cook would be passed out on one of the tables. Which he was. Art had a great time. Nobody asked who he was. He was the new guy. Nobody gave a shit where he was assigned to and didn’t ask and at 1600 when I went off of my watch, we all went out for beers.

To this day, Art likes to tell people about the day he spent in the Navy. People would ask “You were in the Navy for one day?” Where? Southern Indiana, at that point most people think he is either lying or hallucinating.

I spent another six years in the Canoe Club but that, as we say, is another story, or more.

   

            Mensa

Back at the dawn of time, IE the 1970’s, I had a friend named Russ. Russ started out as a real estate client but Russ and I became good friends. I’m guessing that most folks thought of Russ as an odd ball and by some parameters he was. The truth of the matter was Russ was smart, very smart. A member of Mensa smart. Russ wanted me to join Mensa so he could be with someone that he actually knew at the meetings. I declined to join. I thought that I probably had a decent chance of passing the entrance exam. Test passing is one of the few talents that I was born with. I just wanted to observe Graucho Marx’s philosophy of “I wouldn’t want to join any group that would have me as a member”. Also as an old professional sailor, I thought that I wouldn’t really fit in with all of those egg heads.

Russ and I were talking on the phone one day and the topic of Trivial Pursuit came up. Russ said that nobody would play the game with him anymore  because he has won every game he has ever played. Every single game, I asked? Yes, every game. I told him that nobody would play the game with me either for the very same reason. You’ve also won every game you’ve plated, he asked? Every, I replied. One of us said that if we were to play against each other, one of us could not make that claim anymore. That sounded like a challenge if there ever was one so it was game on. Russ was so confidant that he was going to kick my sorry ass that he would have me over to his home, and have his wife make us lobster to cushion the blow when he beat me. The evening I came over we dined on lobster, drank some really good whiskey and went to battle. I won game #1. I was still unbeaten. You know who wasn’t anymore. Russ wanted a rematch. Long story short, I beat him again. One more game Russ? We played a third game. Half way through game #3, It was clear that I was way ahead and with a flurry of swearing, Russ threw in the towel and conceded the game. As anyone who knows me at all will tell you, I have a really crappy memory. So I didn’t have all of the answers committed to memory as some people have claimed.  I just seem to have a real knack for test taking. My son Dave has the gift also although he probably is smarter.

I had talked to Russ a few times on the phone as a potential customer but  I never met him face to face until I had an offer of his to sign for a sixteen unit apartment building that I had sold him. The building was relatively pricy and there was an equally pricy second trust that we wanted the seller to “carry back” to make up the balance of the down payment as was the custom back then.

As I was leaving Russ’ home I commented that I needed to get some background info about Russ to help the comfort level of the seller who was now also to be the secondary lender. I asked where he worked. He said Mattel. What do you do at Mattel? He was the head of the data processing department. Very good. How long? He answered 23 years but was leaving Mattel in two weeks. Whoops, not so good. Where are you going? He told me he was going to Drake Engineering.

Drake Engineering, that name had a slightly familiar ring to it. What do they do? He said that they made racing engines. I said Drake? As in Myer-Drake? Yes. As in Offenhauser, the engines used at Indy?   Yes again. What will you be doing at Drake, I asked? He replied that he was going to be the new president. Well that’s pretty good news.

Over the next few years Russ would call me and ask me down to Drake in Costa Mesa to see “What were putting on our dynamometer”.  Drake was doing, at that point in time, what any prudent executive would be doing with their company on the ropes to pay the bills. Being one of the premiere names in auto racing, Drakes dyno results were like Moses’ stone tablets or Caesar’s wife, beyond question.

I remember one time they had a VW engine with twin turbochargers on the stand. This was about 1979 and nobody ever hears of putting TWO turbos on the same engine. I was shocked. Russ told me that VW hired engineers like housewives buy eggs. They get them by the dozen.

As an aside about test taking, about twenty years ago my son Dave and I were returning back to Long Beach from the schooner races in San Diego. As we were leaving Harbor Island we went over to the fuel dock for some diesel fuel. The place was packed and there was over an hours wait to fuel up. I said that we had enough fuel to motor back to LB and besides we should be able to sail back. Off  we went and when we had Oceanside off of our starboard beam the motor shut down. We had run out of fuel and there was no wind to sail on. We settled down to wait for the wind to come up. We sat dead still for over 24 hours. The GPS showed us that we had moved less than a mile all night. Dave told me that an empty Styrofoam cooler had passed us a few hours ago and here we still sat. To amuse ourselves we asked each other question from a Mensa book that Dave had on how to pass their entrance test. I chuckled after awhile and commented on how screwed up we were acing the Mensa test questions but didn’t have enough common sense to not run out of fuel. Finally I had had enough and called Boat US and they dispatched a boat out of God knows where with a five gallon can of fuel. The 5 gallons of fuel cost me $100 FOB literally freight on BOARD   but it was money well spent as we had consumed all of the food, and most of our beer and booze on board. No sooner than I restarted the engine, the wind piped up, really hard and we sailed from Oceanside to LB in no time at all. I suppose any responsible Mensa would have done the same damned thing.